The Voice of Descent

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence is betrayal."  - Dante

 The United States of America has a rich tradition of assasinating our leaders and then celebrating them on their day of remembrance. Though throughout our public school education we are indoctrined with the I Have a Dream speech, we are not exposed to a diffrent side of Dr. King.  In a speech condeming the violence in Vitenam, Dr. King voiced his opinions and concerns of the morality of the American society.

I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men.  I have told them that Molotov cocktails and riffles would not solve their problems.  But they ask, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?”  They ask if our own nations wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems.  And I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly about the violence in the world today; my own government.

…We have destroyed their (Vietnamese) their two most cherished institutions; their land and their crops.  This is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, as a nation we must undergo a radical revolution of values.  We must radically begin the shift from a thing orienyed society to a people oriented society.

Unfortunayely, as we all know, Dr. King became a victim of the same violence he opposed. Whille nearly 44 years later we have forgotten that hisassassins has yet to be prosecuted, we are bombarded with the black and white images of Dr.  King preaching non-violence.  To you I ask, Why erase history when it can simply be rearranged.

After posting my initail thoughts on the celebration of MLK Day on a popular social network, a fellow student responded:

They assassinate them because they want the "lower" class of citizens who is the labor force to stay exactly there, down. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for the wealthy. Bright side of the story is that we still have their ideals to built on and inspire future generations.     

My response to this staement is that it's not enough to think in terms of "us" and "they". We need to accurately identify who "they" are. Its a shame when they use the image and memory our leaders to propagate their agenda, and even worse when we buy into it.  It's wake up time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkp7tkeu22I